Magazine

Mar - Apr 2015

I’ve slept under the stars often enough, but only once when it wasn’t my choice. I found myself in the industrial zone of Aachen, Germany, while hitch-hiking across Europe. It had been sleeting and the rides had been sparse, and now, hours after dark, trudging through heavy snow, I was alone, cold and wet. I found shelter in a phone box and drifted off to sleep sitting on the concrete floor, hugging my pack, leaning back against the door while the fluorescent lamp flickered and buzzed. I woke with every truck that rumbled past, and the feeling of insecurity, fear, loneliness, and in particular, the sense that I was shacked up illegally in a public convenience, shook my confidence for days.
Yet this one-night experience can’t compare to the uncertainty tens of thousands of New Zealanders face each evening, month after month.
Housing affordability has become the latest political football booted between the left and right as the public watch on. Less so the issue of homelessness, which has remained invisible at best, at worst wilfully ignored. The number of homeless isn’t large enough, perhaps, for the problem to gain political or popular attention, and those sleeping rough under our bridges, or in woodlands on our urban fringe, are largely voiceless, lacking either the ability to contact the media or the agency of others more socially empowered.
Every Christmas, we toss some canned goods in a cardboard box and call the problem dealt with. But as our cities have grown, so has the number of homeless.
Agencies have also expanded the definition to (rightfully) include all those without proper accommodation—those living below the minimum standards that a country like New Zealand should desire for its citizens. That number is now substantial—34,000 Kiwis are sleeping rough, living in over-crowded housing, or in the care of night shelters and social services.
In the production of the feature on homelessness for this issue, I came to realise that a New Zealander can find themselves without a home relatively swiftly. Workers on flexible employment contracts without minimum hours—so-called ‘precarious’ employment—are becoming more common, and with rising rental rates and high household debt, a couple of misfortunate life events can compound to leave an individual with nowhere to go. This is how a gainfully employed contractor with a master of physics degree can find himself unemployed, living in a car, later bankrupt and living in a shelter in a few dizzying weeks—a scenario that befell Anthony Baird, interviewed in this issue.
We’ve been here before. A 1935 survey classed a quarter of New Zealand’s houses as substandard, Rebekah White discovers in this issue’s Artefact column. In 1937, Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage carried a dining table into the living room of the first home of a new state housing programme, a media stunt that heralded a change in policy, and an assertion of a growing public opinion: that every citizen had a right to decent housing.
It was an attitude that put a little more distance between New Zealanders and the memory of Victorian society, just as the horror of Gallipoli shaped our attitudes and values years earlier. At the root of those new ideals was a compassionate and egalitarian notion of fairness. A fair crack of the whip. A fair go.
State housing stock peaked at 70,000 in the 1990s, and since, governments have rated rentals at market levels and sold down state houses in favour of cheaper alternatives and solutions from the private sector. But with tens of thousands now living in substandard housing, perhaps it’s time to review again the sort of society that we want to live in and contribute to. There are economic advantages in better, healthier homes, but also the value proposition of a fair and equitable society—what do we do for those who call New Zealand home, but have no place like it?

According to research published in Biology Letters, microhabitats can reduce exposure of a species to extreme climates, highlighting the importance of forests in preventing extinction.
As species adapting to climate change slowly shift to higher ground or towards the poles, the microhabitats provide a buffer in two ways. Firstly, they reduce the hottest temperature a species will experience—for example, epiphytes high in the forest canopy can provide an environment almost 5ºC cooler than the ambient temperature. Secondly, the temperature will change more slowly inside a microhabitat than outside.
Scientist Brett Scheffers says the latter scenario means that during a heatwave, for example, a species can remain in a habitat for longer periods and be exposed to cooler, less-extreme climates.
“Unfortunately, this defence only works under short time periods—days to weeks. With severe long-term changes in annual temperatures and reduced precipitation as predicted by many models, no habitat will protect species from this level of climate change.”
Species extinction is a fundamental issue of the 21st century, he says, with habitat loss continuing and climate change looming. “But if there is a glimmer of hope to be found from my study, it is that healthy, pristine rainforests provide a diversity of habitats that species may use.”

More than 30,000 New Zealanders lack a proper home, and live instead in cars, caravan parks, night shelters, boarding houses or on the street. It’s one of the most striking symptoms of a country in which people lead increasingly precarious lives.

The Dun Mountain Trail is a stunning one-day mountain-bike ride crossing a landscape of outstanding natural beauty and fascinating history. From Nelson city, it follows New Zealand’s first railway line, climbing at an easy gradient through beech forest to a large clearing at a shelter called Third House. From there, the railway line continues, but the forest becomes stunted and is suddenly left behind as you enter a dramatic landscape, beaten by the elements and devoid of almost any significant vegetation—a place where building a railway line seems crazy. The tracks were laid down in 1862, by those in search of not gold but chromite. They never found enough to bankroll their misguided endeavour, and the railway line, which ends at Coppermine Saddle, was only used for a few years. From the saddle, a massive downhill leads to the Maitai Dam, where Nelson city stores its water. Apart from the obvious—gravity is suddenly your best friend—you will also notice that the gradient is steeper and trail surface rougher. Those with full suspension bikes will love it, but others will have to take it easy and be ready to pick their way through a slalom course of rocks. From the dam, the trail follows the water pipeline towards Nelson, before dropping through forest onto a gentle country road that drifts down valley, right back to the city centre.

Social entrepreneur Emeline Afeaki-Mafile’o is responsible for a South Auckland mentoring programme, several strands of community-based government policy, an Otahuhu high school and 100 per cent of Tonga’s coffee industry.

For most people, "Bloody Sunday" refers to the day in January 1972 when 26 unarmed civilians were shot by British soldiers during a protest march in Northern Ireland in 1972—a massacre hauntingly commemorated in U2's anthem "Sunday, Bloody Sunday."